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Needed to pull the trigger on that 1-1. Grounds out weakly. He’s a guy that needs to get going or he may join Scott in Memphis if someone else comes in and hits.
It would be nice to see a Cardinal game in Oakland. Sit about anywhere you want, relax with your feet on the seat in front of you, no lines at the beer stands…..
Man, Gorman does that now and then – drops the ball. At least the second time he has done that this year.
Boy, that dropped throw killed us. Looks bleak now down by three. We have already scored our usual allotment of runs per game.
With the talk about the A’s history in Oakland, I am surprised there has been no mention of Tony LaRussa being the long time manager of both of these franchises.
Goat = Oli
He managed Matz how he wants him to be. 5 or 6 IP and 90-some pitches is not Steven Matz.Oli managed like he wanted his “when behind” relievers to throw today. He didn’t go after the win, or even try to protect the lead.
Team Is pretty heartless. Simply workman-like. No one is having much fun win or lose. Not sure if it’s leadership or simply a quiet acknowledgement that it’s a broken (again) roster. Whatever, it’s not working.
Neither win in Oakland inspires confidence. Then there’s today’s turd.
Almost everyone is underperforming. That is a bad sign. And I also feel they are just going through the motions. I know you are supposed to keep and even keel but it would be nice to see a little more emotion.
I feel that they know they in a deteriorating system.
9-4 in games to start or continue a series, and 0-6 in getaway games. Like I said earlier, a lack of focus and it needs to get sharpened. If not, Marmol needs canned before more damage is done to a perfectly solid team.
One problem is none of our highly touted younger players have come up and really made an impact. We haven’t had anyone do what Adolis Garcia did for Texas, or Randy Arozarena for Tampa. These guys are young – Walker, Gorman, Carlson, and the like, and it will hopefully be that one or two turn out to be real good.
But to date no one has lit a fire early in their career. Winn is off to a nice start, as is Herrera. Maybe they can keep it going and others pick up the momentum.
But so far there is nothing that makes you think we can stay in the hunt. And Ollie is certainly nothing special – sort of unemotional and seems afraid to shake things up. He looks like a guy who wants to stay in the lines and not ruffle feathers. But sometimes you need some out-of-the-box thinking – shake things up and get creative. Show some passion. Try something different. Like my never ending mantra about Victor Scott never bunting. How can the field leadership team watch him day in and day out and not work with him to lay it down and see what happens? The management team just does the same thing hoping next time will be different – but they don’t force the issue – they don’t make it happen.
I think we will drop 2 of 3 this weekend and start a slow descension down the ladder to where by Memorial Day we will be looking at double-digit games behind numbers. Hopefully I am wrong and things turn around. But this club on paper did not inspire me coming in to the season, and on the field looks about the way I thought they would when looking “on paper”.
The problem is that Goldschmidt, Gorman and Walker all have OPS’ below .625.
And nobody can be benched, because the bench is even worse.
Just too many holes to plug in one off-season. And, to Mike’s point, they haven’t had a consistent all-star type (whom they’ve retained) come out of the farm system in quite some time. The last homegrown Cardinal to have multiple all-star caliber seasons (>4 WAR) with the team was prime Matt Carpenter, and the last pitcher to do so was prime Wainwright. They’ve had some farmhands in the last few years have single seasons that were all-star level (Edman), but no one who has achieved sustained excellence.
Although I happen to think he’s the worst Cardinal manager of my lifetime, the team’s failures in the early part of the season can primarily be attributed to multiple underperforming players. This ’24 edition as a whole has a look and character that could be termed that of a flatline and I can’t detect much of anything that indicates energy or enthusiasm. Of course, there’s not too much to be enthusiastic about at this juncture. Winning some games could change the sort of bland persona that’s been displayed so far, but the players are going to have to step up and perform in order for that to happen.
On the sunny side of things, any baseball team that’s scored just 70 runs in 19 games is very fortunate to be just 1 game under.
Agree 1TD! There are only two NL teams that have scored fewer runs than the Cardinals (Marlins, Nats). The Redbirds have a number of key players under-performing. The early returns on the re-vamped pitching staff have been positive.
We had the lead, and Marmol sent Matz back out for the 5th. If you understand who Matz is at all, it was a suicide mission.
Marmol managed the game to lose, and we did. That was a gutless display of managing. Entirely unacceptable.
This Cardinal roster is not good enough to manage any game as if we are a lock to make the postseason. We need to fight for every win the first half, or we are sellers again.
All our offseason conversations about Quality Starts and 200 IP rotation members, that’s full season stuff. How much does it matter if we’re sellers?
Sorry for the rant.
As long as the team can at least hover around .500 making the bloated playoffs is possible.
It appears to me that is all the Cardinals are trying to do – for now.
If I had to guess they are hoping this crop of young position players pans out such that next year they have a really potent lineup.
To that maybe they add another front line starter to go with Gray – and parlay that into a deep playoff run or two before the cost of keeping the young guys spirals out of control…just guesswork on my part as to what the long term strategy might be.
The problem with Matz is that we are paying him $12.5M and yet expecting at least 5 innings out of him is unreasonable? That isn’t sustainable at all if you want to not burn your bullpen out before May. And he isn’t the only starter like that. We have fragile starters and zero offense. Not a good combination. As others have said I am shocked we are only one game under .500.
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